Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Satire and parody are hard. One tends either to be too ham-fisted (see anything by Mel Brooks) or so subtle as to be understood only by one's mother... and she's just laughing to make you feel better.

Then there's Scott Ott of Scrappleface. His parody ranges from good to excruciatingly good. He so has a line on things that, if you see his articles out of context, you have to double-check to be that it isn't an actual story. Check his archives, you'll see exactly what I mean.

Dress[ed] in casual khaki pants and an open-collared long-sleeved denim shirt, his hair mussed with a self-confessed “bad case of miter head,” the pontiff formerly known as Joseph Ratzinger (TPFKAJR), said that “during a long sleepless night of prayer” he had begun to wonder “whether all the pomp and circumstance sends the wrong message, and directs people’s gaze on me rather than on the one who deserves our worship.”

“It makes good television — you know, all the candles and gold and costumes — but we have gathered to celebrate the resurrection of the only sinless man who ever ever lived, the one we believe is Lord the Universe,” the Pope said, “and that ain’t me.”

Well, Libbie, you know that there's only One True Church{tm}, and it's our fault we're not in it. We're in one of the (by their count) 2,476,035,121 Protestant denominations -- instead of being enfoleded into one of the 2,476,035,122 factions of One True Church{tm}!

So it's our fault that we don't accept the plain, simple truth taught by the True Church{tm} -- because it's an unfathomable mystery that critics can never understand!